Hexagonal Turquoise-Glazed Kütahya Tile

A hexagonal architectural tile from the kiln centers of Kütahya, Anatolia, dating to the 1930s. A thick monochrome turquoise copper-oxide glaze pools over a hand-pressed, high-silica earthenware body, running down over the peripheral edges. The reverse remains raw biscuit, with kiln marks and no trace of mortar, the tile was never set into a wall.

During the state restoration campaigns of the 1930s, Kütahya workshops were charged with producing replacement tiles for classical monuments across Anatolia, among them the fifteenth-century Yeşil Türbe (the Green Tomb) in Bursa. Matching the depth and thermal behavior of early Ottoman monochrome glazes demanded repeated batch testing, and the weight, hand-pressed substrate and unmounted state of this piece are consistent with an archival workshop trial or firing-control specimen.

For analysis of monochrome glaze formulations and twentieth-century Kütahya workshop history, see John Carswell, Kütahya Tiles and Pottery (Oxford University Press, 1972).